Saturday, April 28, 2007

Lovely Photo: The Cycle Of Life


What do you think of this photo? Is this what life is all about...? Women generally live longer according to statistics available. The man outlived the woman in this one. Otherwise this is a photo to make you think.

Aishwarya Rai Wedding: Will It Mar Her Bollywood Career?

































Is Aishwarya’s wedding doing great things for her?
She seems to have distanced herself from the major men of the silver screen following her much hyped wedding. I wonder with whom Aishwarya will pair on the silver screen in the coming days!

Shahrukh Khan the hot man of bollywood is not likely to pair with her any more considering that he was not invited for her wedding!

Viveik Oberoi cannot of course be considered; he being Aishwarya’s jilted lover.

Salman Khan will be left out for the same reason as Viveik after his doomed relationship with her!

Hrithik Roshan will have trouble after his smooching act in Dhoom2.

Amir Khan and Saif Ali Khan were again uninvited for the wedding; so the duo might have problems.

All the above seem like remote possibilities. Well one real life hero in the form of Abhishek has resulted in the exit of many reel-life heroes! Looks like Abhishek will be her leading man on the silver screen for some time to come.


On another note Ms. Rai is using the “Bachchan” surname and is even signing with the new name and will move in with her in-laws – Aishwarya and Abhishek will live with Big B.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Blogspot Blog Causing Errors?

I am facing some nagging problems when I create a new post on my blog. I just typed out a new post and published it but it refuses to show up on my blog! But I am sure it will display after a few minutes or may be an hour. Similarly when I make changes to my template or blog posts and publish; it does not immediately reflect the changes. I am not aware why. Could be some bug that Blogger technicians need to fix. I've been experiencing this only for the past couple of days.

Why is this? Any other bloggers on the google blogspot platform facing similar problems? I hope this post will reflect now so that some one will see it and clarify!

Google Is Now the World's Most Valuable Brand

Search engine giant Google has become the No. 1 brand displacing other giants like Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart. The latest findings have placed Google at the top.

Market research firm Millward Brown put Google ahead of the above formidable brands. The rankings are based on available financial data along with research and interviews with consumers worldwide, Millard Brown said. Google’s jump from the 7th position last year to the top slot shows the growth, status and its popularity. It is interesting to note that Google uses little public advertising.

Some other factors that are considered in brand recognition this year are corporate responsibility and serving customers in emerging markets like India and Brazil.

Top Brands:

  1. Google
  2. General Electric
  3. Microsoft
  4. Coca-Cola
  5. China Mobile
  6. Marlboro
  7. Wal-Mart
  8. Citi
  9. IBM
  10. Toyota
Source: Millward Brown Optimor

Congratulations Google! You deserve the Numero Uno spot. Google faces the challenging task of maintaining its position at the top now.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Clean your Emails with eCleaner Before You Forward

How many times have you manually done the painful job of clearing out arrow characters or angle brackets “<<< >>>>” in emails that you receive and want to forward to your friends?

eCleaner solves this problem by cleaning unformatted mails by removing arrow characters, HTML tags, getting rid of unnecessary line breaks and normalizing unnecessary spaces at the beginning of each line. In short ecleaner formats the text and makes it look “clean”. It is great for emails that have several forwards.

Just copy and paste any e-mail or web text into eCleaner, press the "Clean" button and then switch back to your Word or E-mail, and paste. It’s as simple as that. Any one who uses Outlook, Outlook Express or web mails for email forwards will find this useful. Improve your email etiquette. I use this and find it quite useful.

Download this free utility: eCleaner download

Making The Police More Efficient! - Nice One

Fred was going to bed when his wife told him that he had left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window.

Fred opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He rang the police, who asked "Are the thieves in your house?" Fred said "no". The cops then said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock all his doors and an officer would be along when available.

Fred said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 60, and phoned the police again.

"Hello, I just called you a minute ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I've just shot all of them." Then he hung up.

Within five minutes four police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at his residence and caught the intruders red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to Fred: "I thought you said that you had shot them!"

Fred said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

Source: Unknown (via email)

Monday, April 23, 2007

Vuguru To Provide Quality Videos & Host Own Content

Vuguru is an online video company launched recently. Vuguru deserves mention because it is owned by Michael Eisner the former high flying CEO of Walt Disney Company.

Vuguru has a two pronged approach: Hosting quality videos on their site and secondly producing and distributing story driven content.

Considering that over 100,000 videos are uploaded on leading websites like youtube, myspace and a dozen others, it is difficult to separate the “cream” from the milk. At Vuguru the selection of quality videos is done by humans and not computers since Vuguru believes that nothing can work like the human mind. There is some truth to it. Vuguru will scour the web for quality videos and bring them to you. At the moment Vuguru is posting one video every day which it alls the “Cream”. These are not new videos but are existing ones at various sites.

Secondly Vuguru will produce and distribute its own in-house videos. It has already launched the inaugural - A mystery drama called Prom Queen, which started off on April 2. This will be an 80 episode drama with 90-second clips, aimed at a tech-savvy teen audience. The videos will center on high school drama. This series will also be available through Veoh.com since Eisner is on the board of Veoh as well.

Keep an eye on Vuguru. It might turn out to be a winner.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Weak American Dollar Not Good News For Expatriates

The mighty American Dollar is losing in strength. This is not good news to some one like me who lives in Dubai – A country where the UAE Dirham is pegged to the dollar. The last couple of years have seen the greenback getting weak against most currencies. The weakening dollar drastically affects my purchasing power back home in India and this is cause for concern. Things will seem far too expensive back home when the dollar or dirham is converted.

The dollar has lost more than 10% in the past year or so. A UAE Dirham which was close to rupees 13 at on point (1.5 to 2 years ago) is now languishing at rupees 11.30. The dollar has fallen from rupees 45 to a little over 41/- now. That’s a near Rs 4 loss to every dollar. Expatriates in this country are not a happy lot with a weak greenback. To worsen things this coincides with a very strong pound sterling and a strong euro as well. One pound has surged to $2. The pound is at its highest against the dollar in the past 25 years. One Euro now fetches a high $1.35. All this has hit hard on expatriates whose income is in Dollars or dollar linked currencies and who want to spend the money in sterling, euro or Indian rupees. It becomes difficult to send money back home to countries like India, Britain and Germany from a country like the UAE. Those wishing to send their children for education to Britain or Europe will be affected. Those who save in dollars only are protected but if an expat wishes to go back home it hits him. The UAE Dirham was expected to be revalued but it has not happened.

Analysts are not expecting a rebound of the US Dollar any time soon. America's growing military commitments in Iraq and elsewhere is likely to keep the dollar low for the next few months. The greenback at the moment is reflecting the state of America vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Of course the mighty dollar might bounce back again. With a change in government at the white house the dollar could regain its lost glory. After all, the dollar has been the best performing currency over the last two decades.